> In the meantime as promised here is the > Beginners Guide to Tagging Classical music... > http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cg...ideToClassical
I looked and have comments. I think there should be a more thorough discussion of what a classical music listener wants to do with the player before you write up a guide. I've been evaluating player alternatives since the SB1 came out while I waited for the price of four 400 GB hard disks to come down to $ 125-150 each. They are getting there. However, I haven't found player s/w that is satisfactory for listening to classical music. My wife and I share tastes in music: classical, broadway shows and showtunes and swing and early jazz. Any solution needs to be usable by her as well as by me. Perhaps 60% of our collection of ~ 1500 CDs is classical music and probably 75% of the listening is for classical music. Finding a solution that really works for classical music has been frustrating. And I can't take the plunge buying stuff until I have something that is usable for us. I've concluded that you need to tell the user how to rip his CDs, how to tag them, how to name the individual files, how to store them on his hard disks, how to set up his Squeezebox and Slimserver and finally, how to find and select files using the Squeezebox or the web interface. Someone who has a collection of classical music knows what he wants to do but he needs documentation to tell him how to accomplish that with a Squeezebox and Slimserver. Let me describe what I'd like to do when I listen to classical music: Normally, I want to play all movements of a piece of classical music in the right order. I want spaces between movements where there were spaces on the CD. If there was no space between movements on the CD, I want no space introduced. This can be very disconcerting to have a break in the sound when the orchestra is playing or a singer is singing. I want to select one version of the piece of music to be played - a particular conductor, orchestra, soloist, etc and have all movements played on the basis of my one selection of the work as a whole. I want the work played to the end ONCE. I don't want SB/Slimserver to start over and play it again. I don't want the player to jump to the next track in the library either. I might like to queue up several works to be played by selecting each whole work. If I use some sort of smart playlist feature, I want it to work by selecting an entire performance of a work to play next. I sometimes want to hear an individual movement in a work. I had that flexibility with CDs and I don't want to lose it. I sometimes want to listen to an entire CD's contents from beginning to end even though it contains more than one work. It is more often the case, that I want to listen to one work on a CD and not to the other tracks. Sometimes a work will be split between two CD's in a set. I want to have all the tracks making up the work grouped so that I can select the whole as a whole. If I like a piece of music, I wind up with more than one performance. Usually, I will have performances by different conductors, orchestras, soloists but sometimes I'll have more than one performance with the same performers recorded at a different time. (For a piece I really like, I might have a dozen recordings.) I need both Composer and Soloist/Conductor/Orchestra information. When I select a work to play, I want to pick a particular performance. I want to select a composer first, then a particular work (Beethoven's fifth piano Concerto), then a Soloist and Conductor and Orchestra. If there are still multiple performances meeting these criteria, I would probably be able to use the CD album title to make a selection. Sometimes, I might start with the Conductor, soloist or orchestra. The ArkivMusic.com online music store is organized in a way that works for me buying music and would work in selecting music to play. (See http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/main.jsp.) I click on composer and the website shows me a list of works by that composer. I pick the work from a list. If there are too many individual works, they are grouped by type (soloist and orchestra, chamber works, etc.) and I pick the type of work first. After I pick the work, the website shows me a list of soloists in one column, conductors in another column, orchestras in another column and record labels in another column. I could start with a conductor and choose composer, work, etc in later steps. A very nice interface. ---- I've been trying to use Softsqueeze and Slimserver along with iTunes, Foobar and MusikCube players. I try to see how to prepare my music library with the following choices: 1. Do I rip an entire work as one file or with one file per CD track? If I rip an entire work as one file, I preserve the right gaps and I can play the work or add it to the queue as a whole. Maybe I can use a cue file to retain information about individual tracks but I don't know how a player handles such a file unless it is clearly documented. I may lose the ability to play an indiviual movement if I rip the entire movement as a single file. On the other hand, if I rip each track as a separate file, I may have problems preserving the spacing between movements and I will probably have trouble selecting an entire work as a unit for playing or queueing. 2. What text do I put in what tags? 3. How do I store my files in folders? 4. What scheme do I use for file names? 5. What setup choices do I make when I install the player s/w? 6. What commands do I use to select what I want? 7. How will the system work when I've ripped 1500 CDs and added them to my library? Will the player software still be robust and responsive? Will the interface still allow me to select what i want to play quickly and easily? How do I arrange things to keep it working well? I'm willing to be flexible in how I rip, tag, store and name files. However, I need good documentation on the player to understand what will work for me. The way the player s/w works determines the right answers for the questions and the whole set of answers need to be fit to make a usable solution to the classical music problem. For some players, there may not be a reasonable way to use them for classical music. I din't find the "Beginner's guide to tagging classical music"'s simple recommendations to be useful. (Using the "Album" tag to identify a piece, the "Artist" tag to identify the composer and the "Title" to identify the movement.) You need to retain the Conductor, Orchestra and Soloist as a basis for selecting what to play. I thought most of the rest of the guide was on target but the guide doesn't provide a coherent set of answers to the questions I listed. I found a Slimserver option to add Composer tags to the Artist entries in the database but that makes the lists I have to scroll through much longer. And while Slimserver provides some support for other tags, I haven't found a way to use them in the way that Artist and Album tags can be used from the Squeezebox or the web interface. The guide does not discuss what you can do with other tags beyond the basics. I've been experimenting with Softsqueeze and Slimserver to try to find a set of answers to the questions I listed. I haven't found it to be easy and I don't have a reasonable solution yet. I'd hate to give up on the SB/Slimserver package because it offers promise of good sound, good support for open standards like MP3 and FLAC and the ability to work with things like AAC and ALAC when it is needed. I've been lurking on this forum since it was a mailing list. I have collected some good information but I'm disappointed in the advice given about classical music. So I'd like to suggest that we start with a good problem description before we write up a solution. I've described what I'm looking for and perhaps other classical music listeners can describe what they need. Bill -- Listener ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Listener's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2508 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18649 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
